


A Strange Mixture

by Infinitely_Stranger



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: (mentioned in passing), (probably), And funny?, Awkward Romance, Bisexual John Watson, Bisexuality, Developing Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Eventual Smut, Except it's Joan, F/F, F/M, Female John Watson, Female Sherlock Holmes, Female Sherlock Holmes/Female John Watson, Femlock, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Friends to Lovers, Funny navel gazing, Harry Watson - Freeform, Janine (Sherlock) - Freeform, Joan Watson - Freeform, John (Joan) trying to sort herself out, John's Inner Monologue, Online Dating, POV John Watson, Plus some literal navel gazing later on, Post-Season/Series 03, Post-Season/Series 03 Fix-It, Virgin Sherlock, a bit of gentle angst, no one is enthusiastic about that, obviously, reference to homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-08-23 20:44:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8342086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infinitely_Stranger/pseuds/Infinitely_Stranger
Summary: Joan Watson starts an online dating profile. Sherlock is not pleased. Neither is Joan, for that matter.  Sherlock suggests an alternative, and Joan... well, Joan really doesn't know what to think. Until she does.Femlock, POV Joan.Humorous (I hope) internal monologue as Joan comes to terms with her own bisexuality, and her feelings towards Sherlock.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just a heads up as we go along: Joan can pretty awkward about a range of things - I've tried to carry the Watson 'not being very good at talking about emotions' issue into her internal dialogue. As such, the opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the opinions of the author, etc., etc. 
> 
> Some based on my own experiences. Obviously not everyone's experience, or cup of tea.  
> Work complete!  
> Unbeta'd (sorry), though obsessively proofread. Let me know if you see errors. Also feedback welcome.

'Human nature is a strange mixture, Watson... However, we have no choice as to our action...'

-Sherlock Holmes, 'The Stockbroker's Clerk'1

* * *

 

 

I don’t know why I’d done it. The girls at work had been pestering me about it for ages, it seemed. Wasn’t tactful, really. I know it had been… well, it’d been a while since all that… Since…. You know.

Come on, you can say it, Watson. Use your grown-up words.

Ahem. It’d been a good long while since it all went tits up with Martin. And the baby that…well. Wasn’t. 

Only, the girls at work didn’t know about that. Not one of them. I’d been off work then anyway, when Sherlock had been shot. And then I was off a bit more when she reopened half her stitches and needed to be dragged back to hospital. I’d imagined that’d been in the news, but I wasn’t looking at the news then. Too busy worrying about my best friend flat-lining in front of me. Again. And shortly thereafter, I was too busy worrying about escaping the nightmare that had become of my marriage and, a bit further down the line, escaping the semi-detached construct I’d shared with someone I thought had been Martin Morstan. I mean our flat, not the marriage. Although same concept, I suppose.

Aaand that’s quite enough thinking on that topic. So. The girls at work don’t know all that. What they _do_ know is that no one asks Dr. Joan Watson what happened to that nice nurse Martin from the old office, and no one asks why all the oby-gyn appointments were magically shifted to other doctors for about a year’s time.

But it’s been a while. Quite a while. I’ve been back at 221b for well over a year now, and it’s even longer since Sherlock managed to evade the old Eastern European death sentence (second eastern European death sentence, I should say, not that I knew about either until after the fact). While that had all been part of Sherlock’s well-meant but ill-thought-out determination to save my marriage, in reality, it had been even longer since I’d known, deep down, that things between me and my wonderful, down to earth, lying, ex-assassin husband were hopelessly irreparable. Because there are some things that no amount of rationalisation can fix, even from one of the most brilliant minds in London. Hell, _the_ most brilliant mind in London, as far as I’m concerned. And my (ex)husband shooting the possessor of said brilliant mind, otherwise known as my best friend, the recently resurrected Sherlock Holmes is one of those things. What kind of person does that? _What kind of sodding-_?

 Ahah. Ha. Deep breath, Watson. We’re getting off topic here.

Right. So. The other thing that the girls at work _do_ know is that their minor-celebrity colleague has now passed beyond the adequate mourning period for her ‘do not under any circumstances ask about it’ divorce and has entered into the ‘too single to satisfy office gossip quota’ range.

 So without further ado, I’ve er. Yeah, I started a dating profile. It’s been up for about half an hour, and I pretty much hate it already. But. Well. Can’t wallow can we? Because it isn’t that I’ve been wallowing. Not really. Not at all in fact. I wouldn’t even say I miss Martin, exactly. Of course, I’m still affected by what happened between us from time to time, if by ‘affected’ you mean really fucking furious. But it passes.

 So. A dating profile. Seemed like the thing to do. I guess. Yes. The sensible thing. It’s what people do nowadays. I’ve been told. You get to select people who match your interests. Or things. Which is good. It’s good.

Not that I'd been able to put ‘interests: chasing maniacs around crime scenes’. Thought that might attract the wrong crowd.

Ok, I’ll admit, I caved, I’ve become hopelessly middle class. I signed up on the Guardian's dating website.2 You know, the Guardian, which I buy every weekend to read over a nice hot brekkie and do my crosswords, before Sherlock uses it to sop something up, or as wadding in a home-made combustibles experiment. Because it’s not like I’m in my 20s anymore, is it, and all those blokes on the other ones looked awful.  And the Guardian narrows it down enough that, with any luck, no one will ever contact me. Ha. Yes. Good plan, Watson. Very much in the 'getting out there' spirit.  Oh yes, also it’s hideously called called ‘soulmates’, and I’m pretty sure Sherlock will laugh herself into a coma when she finds out. Except she’s not going to, if I can help it.

It feels good, I suppose, getting out there again. Sure. Definitely good. I by no means spent over an hour trying to decide on a username that didn’t immediately give me away as ‘that doctor that used to be in the news with the hat detective and is now getting a little middle aged and desperate’.  Nor did I nearly shit myself when I mistook the sound of the Married Ones’ door slamming for the sound of Sherlock entering the flat, as I was in the midst of an awkward attempt to take a profile picture that cleverly bridged the line between ‘desperate’, ‘apathetic’ and ‘I haven’t slept in months’.

I’m beginning to suspect that I am, indeed, getting old, because I do not remember the prospect of dating eliciting so much dread. I mean, maybe it’s just anticipation. A very heavy, wearying sort of anticipation that makes me wish the whole ordeal was done with. And I haven’t even attempted to meet anyone yet. Jesus, I’m too fucking old for this. Except I’m not, which is why the damn profile is up.

One is not the itinerant flatmate of Sherlock Holmes without having it emphatically drilled into one’s mind that the blowfly ( _Calliphora vicina_ and friends) is exceedingly proficient at locating a dead body, being capable of laying its eggs upon a corpse within five minutes of death, and sometimes, when open wounds or tissues are accessible, even anticipating death. (By ‘emphatically’, I mean ‘appeared in horrible experiments on several occasions at the breakfast table’).

The universe allowed me, therefore, approximately the elapsed time of a blowfly egg-laying venture, in which to exercise the hope that Sherlock would not discover said dating profile.

And then Sherlock arrived home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) Yes, this is one of *those* endnotes. The kind that'll give you horrid flashbacks of writing essays/papers/theses. Just to say: I've deliberately misappropriated this quote so it vaguely matches the themes reflected in the story. He talks about baddies in the cut sentence, but that's no fun. Arthur Conan Doyle, 'The Stockbroker's Clerk', _The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes_ (London  & Edinburgh, T. Nelson and Sons).
> 
> (2) This is a real [thing](https://soulmates.theguardian.com). [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/international?INTCMP=CE_INT</a), for those of you who haven't come across it, is well known left-leaning news provider. They have been known to feature articles on Quinoa. And grannies doing karaoke, I see. They are also known for their occasional typos, thusly, 'The Guarniad'.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock finds out about Joan's online dating profile. References are made to eels, among other things. Nobody is pleased. Sherlock makes a proposal.
> 
> .....

‘Interesting.’ A waft of autumn chill announced Sherlock's entrance, and I peeked out of the kitchen to see her performing the feat by which she somehow extracted herself from her coat without ever tearing her eyes away from her phone.

‘What’s that?’ I assumed she’d wandered in halfway through a conversation with mind-palace Joan, who (still) magnanimously took over for me when I selfishly abandoned Sherlock to frivolous pursuits like ‘job’, ‘sleep’, or god forbid 'the toilet'…

‘The teal beret? Was it just because of the accident with the Whitechapel Barber, or is it part of a new headwear code for people of your age to signal to prospective partners that you’ve been pressured into this by your co-workers?’

Bugger, she’d seen the profile then. Damn blowflies. And she was on about the sodding Whitechapel thing again.

‘That was a haircut. Not an accident, Sherlock,’ I reminded her. Again. As if she didn’t definitely already know, ‘A haircut that I happened to have done in Whitechapel. And that is my favourite beret. I look good in a beret,’ I added, injecting a bit of Captain Watson into my posture. She’d have to try harder than that to make me horribly regret ever putting the thing up. Not that I wanted her to try. Or …needed her to, for that matter. Plenty of self-generated regret.

‘Ye-es. But I thought you weren’t wearing it after where it ended up last time.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh you know, the fish skip, how could you forget? Bearded chap, yellow Wellies, bit of an eel problem, whole new species of maggots previously unknown to inhabit Britain…’ Sherlock wandered into the kitchen, nostrils flaring as she apparently sniffed out the possibility of tea. This always amused me, although it never amused her when I brought it up, possibly because I'd compared her once to a particularly smartly dressed sniffer dog.

‘What fish skip case?’ I racked my brain – I may not have a mind palace, but some things you definitely didn’t forget, ‘There was no fish skip case. Unless it was in a chippy. I’m pretty sure I’d remember if I’d encountered a case involving festering eels…’ they are pretty much the worst creatures imaginable, in my humble opinion. Across the kitchen, Sherlock froze, a mug dangling precariously from her index finger. She wasn’t facing me, but I caught a distinctive twitch of her eye, as though she was trying to see if I’d noticed without actually moving. Oh dear god no.

‘Sherlock?! What did my favourite beret have to do with a case of fucking eels?!’

 ‘Nothing! You’re right, I was mistaken. No fish skip case. Teal is good, it brings out the colour in your eyes. In no way looks like you’re trying to disguise a regrettable hairstyle, while suggesting that you’re characterful enough to fit in with the selected demographic of the Guardian’s middle aged singles within a 20 mile radius of London.’

 ‘Sherlock!!’ I barked.

 ‘Yes, coming Hudders!’ She called out in a raised voice, ‘I’m afraid I’m off again Joan, Mrs. Hudson beckons, expect me late, Molly has morgue toes, don’t wait up!’

‘Sherlock!’ leaping across the room, I managed to snag her by the back of the shirt as she made for the door.

 ‘Mrs. Hudson isn’t home - off to her sister’s, remember?’ I issued through gritted teeth.

 ‘Let go, Joan, it’s Armani.’

 ‘Oh yeah, like the Belstaff hasn’t been in the Thames a few odd times. Three, that I can count.’

 ‘That’s three too many.’

‘At least it wasn’t eels. Beret, Sherlock?’

 ‘I cleaned it! It was cleaned. Did you smell anything? No, see, good as new.’

‘Oh ho. You. You.’ I sucked in my breath. Just then I noticed something shifty about Sherlock’s expression. That little edge of off-ness tempered by a hint of desperation, like she was hoping I’d take the bait. Vindication! My hat probably hadn’t been near a chippy, much less any festering eels. But she was pretty dead set on making me believe it had. Right. I could deal with this. ‘This’ undoubtedly being a variation of the ‘Sherlock destroys Joan’s personal life’ routine, which was… actually not as depressingly familiar as it once had been. It’d been years now since I’d encountered anything of the sort, but then, it’d been ages since I’d even thought about dating.

I let her go and both of us went our own ways, me muttering about cod liver oil as a source for vitamin D, her muttering about the statistical likelihood of meeting a serial killer online. Which I was not, for the record, listening to. At all.

I thought I’d got off fairly easy, from Sherlockian standards. I was almost disappointed. Not like I wanted her to convince me to close the profile. Or sabotage it, say, hack into my account and take it down, or anything like that. Ha. Why would I want that? Because that would be invasive, and then it would just be me and her in our tip of an apartment with a bunch of cases forever and no one to interrupt. Which would obviously be really bad… for definite reasons… which are… ok, not actually occurring to me at this moment.

Oh yes, I know. Because one of the things I’ve become very aware of, moving back here, is that I like companionship an awful lot, and the prospect of having to live alone again (at whichever point in the future Sherlock tires of me and runs off on some adventure, or assignment from Mycroft or, you know, finally mentions His Nibs the Government’s gateauphilia one too many times and has to go into permanent hiding) has become thoroughly unthinkable.

…. 

A few weeks went on uneventfully, and I sort of forgot about the whole thing. There had been the odd ribbing from Sherlock, the evening deduction of a few people on the dating website. Sherlock was keen to jump on the (one woman) bandwagon of convincing me that every single one of the men in the greater London area were unsuitable or insane, which, as the weeks went on, definitely reached the point of statistical improbability. I wanted to be annoyed, particularly when she’d pop out the laptop at breakfast with an announcement of ‘Unicyclist. Two time divorcee, hiding the fact he wears those horrid shoes with individual toes. Probability that he's a serial killer, 62.4%, causes death by suffocating people with his feet, no other logical reason to wear prophylactics on your toes.’ That was a gentle one. Honestly she spent more time on the site than I did. I wanted to be annoyed, but it managed to be somehow endearing. I mean entertaining. Whatever.

But then the topic kind of died, or I thought it had until one otherwise nondescript evening.

‘I don’t see why you bother.’

‘Pardon?’ I had been perusing the news, and Sherlock had been doing something that was probably thinking, but currently involved Herself hanging partially off the sofa. I wasn’t sure how her dressing gown managed to stay on in that position, but then maybe she was mentally rearranging gravity, I wouldn’t have been all that surprised.

‘Dating.’ In a single, swift movement, she righted herself, ‘You arrange to meet someone. You expend a significant amount of time worrying that they might turn out to be a serial killer. You spend an extra half hour minimum worrying about your appearance. You wear clothing you are not comfortable in to give an impression that you are more put-together and "feminine" than you actually are. And then-’

 ‘Maybe-‘ I cut her off before I got to hear exactly how many minutes and seconds I spent on other embarrassing post-date activities, ‘because I actually enjoy it.’

‘No, you don’t. On average, you spend at least sixty seven percent more time worrying about it than you do enjoying anyone’s company.’

‘What, you’ve made a chart?’

Sherlock looked away.

‘Oh god, you have. Right. That? That’s a bit not good.’

‘I just don’t see why you still feel the need.’

‘Interesting company?’

Sherlock snorted, ‘I have a far wider conversational range than anyone you’ve selected to go out with. If you want to converse with someone over supper, I’ve made it clear that I am willing to accompany you, even if I don’t particularly feel like eating. I stop on cases for you, Joan, for your stomach.’

‘Right, but that’s not-’

‘In addition, I don’t require you to dress in heels, or business dresses, or make attempts with that blue eye-shadow stuff you still haven’t worked out how to apply properly. I’m already well aware what your eye shape and colour is in a range of situations, along with your various bodily features regardless of dress,’ I made a strangled noise, but she persisted before it could form into words, ‘and I provide you with entertainment – you can’t tell me you find the latest Hollywood concoction more interesting than our cases, because I know for a fact you don’t. You’ve walked out on three films for a case, including one of those dreadfully implausible spy ones you like so much.’

‘James Bond, you bloody well know it’s James Bond. Yes, that’s enough. Sherlock, that’s not the point. The point is. Well, you know. It’s not all company, is it, I’m not exactly going to. I mean there are limits, aren’t there. To you, and me. And you. I mean. You. You don’t. We don’t. Can’t. Ha.’ I coughed. Laughed. Cough-laughed. Utterly failed to insert any humour into whichever parts would have definitely benefitted from humour. Silently begged the topic to be revealed as a horrible joke or dropped. It was only merciful. That’s how things work. We don’t talk about these things, and someone drops the topic.

Sherlock, now glaring at the wall, was muttering something.

‘Sorry?’ I hazarded, my longterm project to curb her habit of dark muttering overcoming my inclination that I wouldn’t like whatever it was she was saying.

‘I said,’ she pushed through her teeth, ‘Statistically speaking, women in same sex relationships are 13.1 percent more likely to achieve orgasm than women in heterosexual ones. That would give you a 74.7 percent likelihood of enjoying yourself not taking into account,’ she took a breath, her eyes still fixated on the wall, and fingers clenched so tightly around her gathered up knees, where she sat perched on her chair, that they looked almost skeletal.

Jesus fucking Christ.

‘Not taking into account…’ she continued, but the rest of the sentence was lost – I saw her lips move, but the rest didn’t come out. She closed her eyes, lips still moving.

‘Sherlock?’ I croaked.

She started, and turned towards me, lucid eyes wide, ‘your partner,’ she whispered, giving breath to the words.

Oh.

‘Oh’. I as much formed the word as said it.

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream. I wanted to yell at her and ask what the fuck she was saying, what she bloody wanted me to do, what she was even suggesting. Because it sounded a hell of a lot like she was suggesting… like she was… like she was coming on to me. And show me a world where _that_ made any sense! I mean this is Sherlock bloody Holmes we’re talking about. Sherlock ‘I’m married to my work’ Holmes. She didn’t do that. Not unless it was for a case, and even then, we both knew, she didn’t _do_ that. Not really. Not even when she was trying to get at Magnussen’s P.A. Despite what he’d told the papers. God, she knew I knew that, so what the hell…

Either she thought I was an idiot, and was trying to use me for some experiment. Again. Maybe trying to get me to have some sort of reaction.

Like in the tube. But god knows what she wanted this time.

Or she had finally decided it was time to entirely monopolise every aspect of my life, and thought she had discovered a brilliant new way to permanently eliminate my dating life.

Or she… or she what?

Well, if she were a normal person, I’d say, ‘or she meant it’, but god, it was Sherlock. She couldn’t mean it. She never meant it, did she. I mean, she didn’t feel that way about people, did she? And if she did, it seemed more or less a snowball’s chance in Hell she’d specifically feel that way about me. I was her best friend. I knew she loved me, after a sort, and that she’d probably done a whole lot of Not Good sorts of things to save my arse, but then so had I, for her. She’d planned my wedding, for godssake. God, I didn’t even know if she liked women or men. I’d just always assumed. Well, that she didn’t like anybody, actually.

Ok, I’m spelling this all out clearly now, but at the time, all of this was a sort of crazed simultaneous cacophony in my brain, which horribly wasn’t that unfamiliar, just a new variety of the ‘is Sherlock insane, or am I’ debate which had been my mental bread and butter for about as long as I’d known her.

I heard myself make a strange strangled noise that emerged from somewhere between my urge to scream and to laugh, but something in Sherlock’s look prevented me from turning the noise into either.

It was the same look she had when she asked if things were ‘not good’, the same look when she’d asked if she’d mucked up her maid of honour speech, and oh god, it reminded me of the night she’d come back from the dead. That brilliant, horrible, enraging night. When she’d been so bloody wrong about everything. But then so had I.

By the time I’d closed my mouth, the look was gone, and Sherlock was back to trying to incinerate the wall with her eyes.

I tried to think of a thing to say. I waited for Sherlock to say something. I opened and closed my mouth a few times. I then came to the conclusion that the best thing to do is to pretend nobody had said anything at all. Yes, that was the ticket. A few seconds more, and it would go away. In a moment, I decided I was safe to go into the kitchen without the topic following me, so I walked over and calmly put the kettle on. Yes. Lovely, predictable, nonconfrontational tea. Everything is normal.

Sherlock probably just didn’t know what she was saying.

That’s right. Even though she clearly knows enough about these things to be able to deduce a crime of passion from a few fingernail clippings, not to mention keeping Sean the PA strung along for several months.1

No. No. We’re not thinking. We’re making tea. No thinking, just tea. The topic is dead.

I cleared my throat quietly. ‘Earl grey?’

Sherlock remained quiet for a moment. Then, ‘If you must,’ she intoned imperiously. Back to normal then.

‘Right.’ I set about fixing two cups.

‘Oh and Joan?’

I froze.

‘Just the chocolate biscuits, none of those horrible raspberry cakey things you bought just because they were on offer.’

I opened my mouth. I hadn’t offered biscuits. In fact, the chocolate biscuits were my own supply, the ones I’d hidden in my chest of drawers lest they fall victim to Sherlock’s 3am sugar raids.

Considering the circumstance however, I went and fetched the chocolate biscuits.

Sherlock ate five. As usual. Then, as usual, she pointed out whichever bit of biscuit I had somehow managed to get on myself (‘honestly Joan, I shudder to think of you in the surgical theatre’ had been one memorable exposition). After which she, as usual, sucked the chocolate off her own fingers with a finesse that I found hateful, specifically because we both knew she looked more refined at it than I would using a fork and knife (besides, they were _my_ bloody biscuits!).

As usual, I met this with the combined urges to strangle her with a serviette, and to grab her hands and bite her fingertips in order to stop her from performing this annoying ritual. As was not usual however, I was, for the first time, aware of this thought as I had it, and aware, no thanks to our previous conversation, that it was a bit of an odd one. Yes, it was the product of rage and disgust, but in the end, my reaction was wanting to put her fingers in my mouth.

Which was… what the hell was it?

It was a vision of myself shouting ‘stop eating my bloody biscuits, and stop licking them off your goddamn fingers’ and slapping her hands away from their methodical activity at her mouth, and grabbing them and sticking them in my mouth, because if you wanted to lick your stupid fingers, _I’ll_ lick them, because they were my bloody biscuits after all. Licking her fingers and her palm and letting her see how disgusting it was, and it would be messy and revolting as I bloody well liked, and if she even moved her lips I’d bloody well swallow those up too, just so she’d stop licking her goddamn fingers and…

Oh fucking dear. So that’s where that went.

No. No it didn’t. No, it was revulsion. Not attraction. Revulsion. Not _her wet lips_. Not _her wet, pink delicate lips forming their beautifully horrid words with the deadly precision that I so loved. That thrilled me to all sorts of cores._

She looked up at me, and froze, mouth in a little ‘o’ that then snapped shut, her eyes narrowing. ‘Honestly, you’re nearly as bad as Mycroft sometimes.’

I perceived, to my relief, that I must have been scowling. She reached across and snatched the serviette from between my fingers, where my biscuits had been resting. She wiped her fingertips with microscopic precision, dabbed her lips, and put the folded, soiled thing back in my hand.

‘Oh, and Joan, you’ve still got chocolate on your chin.’

 She sprang from the chair and was off, leaving me still gripping the, now-used, napkin. I wiped my chin, and tried not to think about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) So Sean is the male version of Janine, Magnussen's PA. Had a fandom moment of revelation as I was trying to find a male equivalent of the name Janine. Janine is derived from the french 'Jeanine' which is a feminisation of Jean, which is John. Obviously. So... basically Sherlock was pretend dating someone whose name was literally a female version of John. See, etymology proves Johnlock! Oh yes, and Sean is of course an Irish version of John.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock has suggested that Joan would be better off with her. Joan finds the idea won't leave her alone. This is all internal monologue, but don't worry, things will happen in the next chapter!
> 
> Joan reflects on her past, and things that have lead her to repress her own feelings towards women, so there is some reference to homophobic ideas and behaviour here. Some insight into Harry and Joan's difficult relationship.  
> Again, opinions expressed here not necessarily the opinion of the author.
> 
> Still no beta, so mistakes are my own.

It bothered me more than it should have done, that conversation with Sherlock. I found it following me around in the days after, asking me horrible questions like: ‘what if you were wrong’ and ‘what if she _did_ mean it?’ and ‘what would you do if she did?’.

The thing was, the answer should have been simple. It was. I knew the answer. But it somehow didn’t feel right. It didn’t seem like _my_ answer, it just seemed like the correct one, the one I was meant to give. Obviously if Sherlock was coming on to me, if she ever did it again, if she _did_ mean it, I’d just explain, like I’d done years ago that she wasn’t my type. My type being men and all.

Easy. Peasy. Not even requiring thought. No reason to feel uncomfortable about it.

Problem was, it did feel uncomfortable. Even the thought of saying it felt a bit wrong. It brought about a sort of horrible twisting in the pit of my stomach, _I’m sorry Sherlock_. God. What if she did. Had. Felt something for me? The thought of her face, that flicker of fear, of genuine vulnerability. The thought caused a twist of guilt. Horrible guilt and something else. _I’m not, I’m not gay._ God. It was dread, right there in my gut. Dread. Regret. Disappointment. Like saying it was a lie. Like I would be lying, just taking the coward's route.

 It should have been easy. It should have been thoughtless, like breathing. I ought to have felt something uncomfortable… repelled or something at the thought of it, of being with Sherlock. She was my best friend. I wasn’t gay. She wanted to what… kiss me, touch me, undress me. She wanted me to do that to her.

But I couldn’t… I couldn’t…. I couldn’t make myself feel repulsed by it. By the thought of it. Not really at all. It just seemed natural, somehow. _Obviously my skin should be on Sherlock’s, we share everything else._ Ha. Funny thing, that.

It wasn’t that I was wildly turned on by her. Of course, I appreciated that she was gorgeous in an alien sort of way that made her hard not to watch, but I was also pretty sure that was popular consensus, wasn't it? And she had a terribly precious way of mixing unbelievable elegance with moments of complete awkwardness, in away that always made me want to laugh with gratitude that I was lucky enough to know her at all. But surely, if I had that same kind of chemistry that I had with men, I’d have noticed, right? It would have overwhelmed me until I would have done something, said something. I remember asking Harry how she'd known she was gay and she'd said, 'You know, you just know. Just like you know you like boys'.

But then, that felt wrong too. The thing was, I had never thought of it, girls. Sherlock. Not that way. I hadn’t thought of it because I made a habit of not thinking of it. I knew I wasn’t quite like Harry. That much had been obvious, and she’d made a point of it when we were teenagers, adults, even, pushing herself apart from me. She was gay. I was straight. I was _so_ straight. I was so traditional. She was the different one. I was boring, I was heterosexual, I was probably upholding patriarchy and oppression just by being unfortunate enough to like men. And I got it, sort of. Those things Harry said to me were her walls, her protection, and the things she’d needed to sort herself out, and feel confident enough to stand up in her identity, stand up to our parents, and everybody else. Even if I didn’t find what she was saying fair to me. As the non-oppressed one, as a member of the heteronormative majority, I was pretty sure didn’t have much grounds to complain. I’d seen the other sides of her too, seen her crying after some of her school friends had stopped hanging out with her, stopped inviting her to their sleepovers, because when she said she liked girls, they heard ‘pervert’ and ‘creep’. And that sure as hell wasn’t ok. But Harry did what she needed to, and I did my best not to blame her, even if it still hurt me.

With women, I took up the role of sister, friend, doctor, confidante. I was the one that came to people’s rescue, and the handy tomboy around the house, I had that sturdy reliable look about me that meant most of my friends didn’t see me as competition, and I was alright with that. I could do things myself, and wasn’t afraid to get my hands dirty because, more often than not, I didn't have another option, so I figured I'd might as well be good at it.

Through all that though, I'd understood pretty plainly that I couldn’t be gay because I’d always liked boys well enough, and I’d had it pointed out plenty of times by my sister how ‘not gay’ I was. Nearly before I knew it was a thing you could be. It seemed fairly black and white to me at the time. I was comfortable as a sister/friend/doctor/soldier and I had never bothered thinking much outside of that.

Once or twice, Ella had pushed me. It was in the aftermath of Sherlock’s suicide. Fake suicide, I mean. I’d been devastated, can still barely think about it. Couldn’t say- Just couldn’t say things. Ella’d asked about my feelings towards Sherlock. She asked lots of things, just trying to help me open up, I guess. To let go. But I hadn’t- couldn’t think of it, not even then. I couldn’t think of our friendship as something else, even if it was so obviously much more than any friendship I'd ever had. But to think of what it _could_ have been felt wrong, scary. Not what Sherlock would have wanted. And how on earth would’ve it helped, admitting that I’d not just lost my best friend but what, something more, the love of my fucking life? That I’d told her she was a machine, and then hadn’t been able to stop her from smashing her brains out in the pavement in front of me? Ha. Yes. That was definitely going to help me on the road to recovery.

Even before that, it had scared me to think outside of what I’d always been, because outside of that was Harry (who I knew I wasn’t) and it was people deciding that they maybe didn’t want you as their sister, friend, doctor, or confidante anymore. I should have grown out of that fear, with time, but it was buried so deep in my thought process that I didn’t. I wasn’t even really aware of it until now. Besides, I was privileged. I liked men enough, so I never had to think about what else I might like.

 You learn you don’t think about your girlfriends like that, you stop your thoughts before you go there. Because it’s safer just to be what you’ve always been.

It occurred to me, 23 minutes into my lunch-break on the Tuesday following my conversation with Sherlock, that in some matters, I was a spectacular coward. 

Four days, 5 hours and 17 minutes later, amid my tube ride home, it occurred to me that I might very well remain a spectacular coward for the rest of my days.

 The topic had not come up again, and I could not imagine a scenario in which I would realistically bring it up to Sherlock.

_Hey Sherlock, remember that cringey conversation we had last week where you talked about orgasms and I made a horrified noise and walked away?_

Not so much.

  _Hey, Sherlock, so I know you’re probably asexual, but just on the off chance that you were actually interested, I just wanted to let you know that I might be interested too. Possibly. Oh, yeah, you remember me saying I was straight again, and again, and again…_

Ha. No.

  _Hey, Sherlock, so I’m probably not as straight as I said I was. Just in case. You were interested._

God, no.

‘Hey Sherlock.’

‘Joan.’

 The problem was, once I’d opened the Pandora’s box (‘It was a jar, Joan. In the original legend, it was a jar, that’s why the killer, whose first degree was in classics, left a _jar_ with the last three victims, obvious.’) of possibilities – _what if I was allowed to touch Sherlock_ – it was alarmingly difficult to shut.

I adored her. Of course I did. She was brilliant, fantastic, amazing. As much as I wanted to strangle her half the time, I also wanted to follow her around and show her off and keep her forever. I didn’t want to miss any of it. Not the deductions, not the ridiculous strops, not the horrible experiments, or the fabulous way she looked like a surprised stick insect in lab goggles. But still managed to act poised. Ok, I didn’t love the strops. But I kind of did. I loved that they had stopped bothering me as much as they used to. I loved that they happened, and I could walk out, and I knew I’d be back, and Sherlock knew I’d be back too. She was mad, and ridiculous, and sometimes the things she said made me utterly cringe, but part of me, a large part of me loved even that. End of the day, I’m not as good a person as I seem, and she’s a far better one than she lets on.

There had been enough times in the past where she’d be so brilliant, or so mad, or so ridiculously precious that I just wanted to grab her and squeeze her, like you might a normal person. Maybe. If they were either your boyfriend, or your annoying sibling who you happened not to hate. But I got the feeling that was not on with Sherlock. It wasn’t that she shied away from contact, god knows her respect for personal boundaries was a bit dodgy at the best of times, she just seemed indifferent to it, and wasn’t exactly a cuddly sort of person. Although to be honest, I sometimes got the feeling she might be if she ever got round to admitting it. Quite a few of the strops ended up with her curled up around the union jack pillow in a way that suggested a severe lack of things to hug. I wish I could say I couldn’t imagine a world where Sherlock was starved of affection, but I really could. And that was grim. If anyone could benefit from a bit of a cuddle now and again. Well, I personally thought most people could benefit from that.

But then I wasn’t exactly the sort to go flinging myself on everyone. Found that kind of behaviour sort of horrible actually – attack huggers.

Needless to say I generally prevented myself from throwing myself at Sherlock. But there had been plenty of times where the words ‘you’re amazing’ and ‘you’re brilliant’ felt like they wanted to be actions. Maybe that’s what people saw when they used to think we were a couple. Being with Sherlock makes me feel alive, when I first met her, sometimes I felt like I was beaming, glowing. She was exciting, and fascinating, and brilliant, and I finally felt alive, finally felt excited about life, and about someone. I couldn’t wait to come home at the end of the day. I guess I was a bit possessive, too. Am. I’m the one who knows Sherlock, who she brings along, I’m the only one, really. It’s probably a bit not good. She should probably have more friends. But I’m proud of being a part of it. I’m glad I’m allowed. I can complain about loads of things with Sherlock, I’d be the first to tell you she’s not perfect, and she is a nightmare flatmate. Probably. To someone else. But the thing is, I’m allowed to see it, and allowed to complain, and I’ll complain, and she probably won’t change, and she’ll complain about my un-indexed socks, and I won’t change that, and being a part of that day to day thing, that regularity, that’s brilliant too. A less bright brilliance than the glow of the cases, but just as warm.

She told me, you know, she told me I kept her right. That nearly broke my heart. And made it, maybe. Because she helped put me right when I didn’t think I’d ever feel right again. She was everything to me. The whole bloody un-astronomical Sherlock-centric universe. Sure I tried to fight it, but realistically, she was all the bits that kept it good. Things have been different since she got back, of course they were, they had to be. So much has changed and changed again. But here we are, back in 221B, and it isn’t half bad.

So there I was, adoring, proud, glowing, and having finally opened a terrifying question of _what could I do if I was allowed to touch you? What would I do if you wanted me to?_  

I couldn’t think about it in public. On the tube. I certainly couldn’t think about it in front of Sherlock, not if I could help it. I felt like it would be transparent on my face. _What, me? Oh, just having hypothetical fantasies about my best friend. Just, you know, to see._

I imagined her lips, her fingers. I could do that. They were pretty lips, I’d always thought they were pretty lips.   I imagined her wrists. I’d admired them, the way they shifted from smooth veins to sharp angles when she played violin, and typed like a maniac. The soft white skin that I’d gripped once, trying to find a pulse. I could kiss that.

There was a fine line between admiration and desire, and I wasn’t sure of it anymore. Between love and worship.

I thought of her neck, and her collarbones and her hips, and her stomach. I’d seen most of her, at some point, though little of it all at once. She spent a fair amount of time slipping out of her dressing gown and flopping around in a sheet. I knew she was pretty bony, though not so much as you might think from my complaints about her eating. It’s really only on cases when she doesn’t eat. (More or less _always_ when she doesn’t cook, but that’s a different story). She’s bony, but not enough that you’d forget she’s a lady. Bit of a bum, actually. Just a bit. I mean, it’s not like I’d normally go for a guy with her figure… if you… translated her figure into guys. I mean, she’s sort of tall and lean and things, I’ve always been for your solid sorts of blokes. Not that she didn’t look… depressingly appealing in some of her numerous case related cross-dressing moments.

I can’t help but hearing a running Sherlock commentary in my head, and it’s putting me off a bit, because I can’t picture her wanting me, not really. It feels a bit silly. The bottom line is, it’s one thing for me to say, actually, I’ve thought about it, and I think I’d be fine with you. It’s another to consider it as a reality. It’s just so far from anything I’d think about really happening, I feel oddly distant considering the whole thing.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To no one's surprise except perhaps Sherlock's, Joan closes her dating profile. Sherlock is momentarily confounded. Joan lets her work it out.
> 
> Enter mild smut, stage left. More of a prelude, really.

'That’s it Joan!’

We’re on a case, and Sherlock’s been wheeling around the crime scene, trying to make sense out of it. I’ve said something. Honestly I don’t even know what I’ve said, probably something about desperately needing a cuppa, but it’s clearly helped Sherlock.

‘Of course it’s not the water, it’s the cups – arsenic glaze, common with historical glaziers, but usually only released with acidic beverages!’ She’s grabbed me by the face as she’s exclaimed it, one hand on either side, her hands tangled a bit in my hair. This isn’t the first time she’s done it, and on occasion, I’ve had to go for a squashed ‘ok, well done, you’re squishing my face, let’s hear why’, but this time she bounds off without prompting. This time, though, I miss bits of how exactly the family came by arsenic glazed cups because I’d been caught off guard and can still feel the imprint of her hands tingling warmly on my face. It could have been a thrill, or the ghost of a thrill. It could have been nothing. My heart was beating from the whip of the chase, from the whirl of deductions, from the momentary surprise of having my face suddenly clasped in someone’s hands.

When we sat in the cab on the ride home, she slumped against me as the vehicle hit a curve and didn’t move away. I tried to analyse the feeling. It was comforting, the warmth, but uncomfortable, in that I didn’t know what to do. I might feel more, if I could just touch her. If I knew I could. If I could pull her against me, if I could feel the skin of her hand against mine. 

‘Joan, whatever you’re thinking, you need to stop, it’s making me motion sick.’

‘What? Wasn’t thinking anything…’

‘You were, I always know. And whatever it is, it’s tiresome. Stop!’ I could tell she was still pleased with herself about the case. She had a pleased-with-herself sort of smile on.

I couldn’t help but smile too.

…

A few days later, I closed my online dating profile. I couldn’t face it. I didn’t want to. Maybe it was the situation with Martin, on top of everything else, but I couldn’t picture myself with anybody else. I couldn’t picture myself with anybody, not there anyway. Flicking through the profiles of the various eligibles had just made me cringe inwardly. Picturing myself with any of them made me feel a bit ill. Disgusted. What right did they have to my life? Who the hell could possibly fit into it? I wasn’t even sure I wanted to share my life with someone else. I dreaded the very process of getting to know someone new, the years it took before knowing someone well. I felt too bloody old to be starting fresh, and I couldn’t face it. It was worse now that we’d achieved some local celebrity, what with the blog and everything. I couldn’t help but remember Ella’s early note of me having ‘trust issues’. Nothing like having a mad assassin spouse to make you particularly jumpy about meeting strangers. That, and a constant insight into the criminal underbelly (and overbelly) of the world. I found myself almost wishing I _could_ bring Sherlock on dates, just to make sure I _wasn’t_ meeting psychopath, serial killer, ex-assassin, or current assassin for that matter.

I figured I wouldn’t mention it to Sherlock, that I’d closed the profile. Thought she might be a bit smug. I felt only relief of having it done. A horrible pressure off. I’d decided. None of that for now, just concentrating on the things that genuinely made me happy. And if that happened to be tea, and a crossword, and Sherlock. Well, so be it.

I was still humming merrily to myself when Sherlock came home. She stopped in the doorway, scarf in hand and eyed the flat.

‘What’s the good news?’

‘No news.’ I hummed, pleased to have her stumped, if but for a moment.

She warily hung up her scarf, and set about decamping the coat.

‘You’ve clearly done something. You only attempt cryptics when you’re in a good enough mood to handle the humiliation, and you’ve got your lounge socks on which say you’re determined not to leave the flat again. We didn’t have milk in the flat, but you’ve had some in your tea, meaning you’ve already done the shopping, but on a normal day, your necessary post-work sit-down would put you at the shops now. You were clearly feeling positive enough to forgo this tradition in favour of settling in for a longer term relaxation, something you only do when you’re feeling particularly amiable. So. I repeat, what news?’

‘How about I let you deduce it, eh?’ Oh yes, I was more than content with this madness, screw dating.

Sherlock narrowed her eyes, glanced around the room again, then manoevered herself to her chair.

‘It’s something… about… men.’

‘Not one of your best deductions, if I’m honest. That is 50% of the population.’

That earned me an eyeroll, ‘you know what I mean. It’s not… not someone at work though. Then you might’ve stayed longer and talked. I know you didn’t chat with someone at lunch today, because you were texting me. And if you’d left any later than your normal time, you’d have hit the rainstorm, but your coat’s dry. So.’ She curled her lip, ‘oh no, don’t tell me you’ve got a date with that…’ a flick of the wrist, ‘whatever his name was, the hopeful polygamist from Bolton.’

This was one of the men who’d been on the dating site, who Sherlock had insisted on picking apart from his profile alone.

‘I might do,’ I said, hunkering farther into my newspaper.

‘No, you haven’t,’ responded Sherlock, still regarding me as if I might suddenly sprout spare body parts and go squawking around.

‘No, I really don’t,’ I conceded, without looking up from the crossword, ‘A9, “Romantic activity in vessel – after love, in short”, nine letters.  I’m thinking something to do with rowing?’.

‘Oh Joan, the Guardian, really?’

Sherlock disappeared, clearly a bit miffed she hadn’t sorted it. I hadn’t realised she’d come back into the room until I heard her speak. As it turns out, I had dozed off. She was back in her chair, across from me.

‘You closed it.’

‘Wha- sorry?’

‘You closed your dating profile. Why?’

‘Dunno, didn’t feel ready for it.’

‘But Joan, it’s been years. Normally your dating patterns are much more frequent, for example, you-’

‘Hey, hey, Sherlock. You know, things have changed a lot. It’s not the same as it was, what, six years ago. I’m not really… well, back then I was really looking for someone.’

‘Yes, but that’s besides the point. You’re getting restless, it’s obvious. You’ve been doing more and more of that thing where you pretend to read, or stare off so it looks like you’re thinking normally, but you’re actually thinking about sex or something in that general subject area.’

I coughed. ‘I don’t do that.’ I did.

‘Oh, no need to worry, I’m sure no one else notices it, they never have before.’

‘Er. Right.’

‘It doesn’t fit. I get that you closed it. I accept your reasoning for why. What I don’t understand is why, considering your state of distraction previously, you seem so cheerful about this outcome.’

‘See, this is the second time you’ve been wrong about me.’

‘No. Not the second time. I’m often wrong about you. You keep surprising me.’

‘Maybe. I don’t know. But this is the second time you’ve been wrong for the same reason.’

Sherlock waited.

I took a deep breath.

‘You always assume it’s about a man.’

I kept my eyes fixed on the crossword, my tone as light as I could manage. I could practically hear Sherlock’s brow furrow. The thought made me smile.

‘Is… isn’t it?’

‘No. Not really, no. Not at all, actually. No more men, that’s the whole point of closing the profile, isn’t it.’

‘But. But. You did it because…’

‘Because I can’t be arsed. Because I can’t imagine explaining what we do to anyone else. Because I don’t want to have to split myself in pieces again. Because I’m happy with this here. At the moment.’

‘At the moment.’

‘Sure. And… you know, for the foreseeable future…moments. If that’s ok.’

‘Of course it’s ok, don’t be ridiculous.’ I could tell she’d gone for imperious, but it had come off as a muted mumble instead. I cleared my throat.

‘So er…’ Sherlock sounded perhaps the most uncertain I’d ever heard her. Which, I suppose, made sense. Several weeks prior, she’d made a ridiculous request of me and now, without specifically saying so, I’d effectively told her I’d be keen to go along with it.

‘what… next?’

‘Next? Well, whatever we feel like, I guess. Whatever you like.’

Sherlock’s brow furrowed again. She got up, paced to the window. Picked up the violin. Put it down. Picked it up again. Walked over to the chair. Tapped the violin against the chair’s arm a few times. Put it back in its case. Strode over to me and stood expectantly at the edge of the chair, hands clasped behind her.

‘You said anything. Anything… I … wanted.’

‘Yes, anything.’ I tried to convey as best possible I what I meant. Without saying it. God save me from having to say it.

‘Could be dangerous, that,’ Sherlock said, eyes glinting.

‘God, I know, you think I don’t know that by now?’

She knelt abruptly at the edge of my chair, staring at me, brow constricted. I laid down the paper and pencil. ‘And yet here you are,’ she said.

‘I am.’

With another sudden movement, her hand was on my face, gripping my jaw, her fingers digging a bit into my cheeks.   She continued to look at me, eyes flicking back and forth with rapid precision, as though gauging every manifestation of my reaction, from ears to chin. Which, to be honest, she was probably doing. She turned my head slightly from side to side, still staring, really, staring like she’d never seen me before, like she’d never got a chance to really look. Perhaps she hadn’t. ‘Here you are,’ she muttered again.

I tried to look as encouraging as I could with my face partially squashed in her grip. I was pretty sure I looked a bit like a hamster at the moment, but nevermind that.

I felt a bit of a thrill, not all the sexy kind, either. I wasn’t sure what Sherlock was doing, or about to do. Wasn’t sure what I’d signed up for. That’s the problem with not talking… you think you have an understanding, and then…

Maybe she wasn’t going to kiss me after all. Maybe she’d just occasionally study my face. Maybe she meant she wanted to conduct experiments on me. Maybe she was going to have me taxidermied and kept, just like Billy the skull.

Aa! No, I was quite wrong. In the second of my panicked mental wandering, she had leant it. She’d loosened her grip on my jaw a bit, but her face was now about a centimetre from mine. I could feel her breath across my lips. And then… her lips.

It wasn’t a proper kiss, not really. It was her lips pressed against mine, and her breathing (Earl Grey) against my mouth. There was a split second where I felt her tongue dip out, just for the tiniest moment across my upper lip, and then she was gone. I opened my eyes. I didn’t actually remember having closed them. Sherlock was back in her chair, across from me, feet curled up on it. She looked at me warily. I attempted the encouraging smile again.

‘You’re not gay.’

‘Right. Yeah. Erm. About that. As it turns out. Not actually. Quite as straight as.’

‘But you always said…’

‘Yeah. Hadn’t really bothered. Thinking about it, you know. In comparison to Harry, pretty straight, so always figured. You know. Other stuff didn’t count.’

‘Other stuff?’

‘Oh, I just mean, you know, girl crushes. And things. Normal things. I mean, I thought they were normal. For, you know, straight women. They might be. Just… well. I might not be. So straight.’

‘Oh.’ Sherlock whispered.

Silence fell. I cleared my throat. Well, if we were doing this awkward talking thing… ‘What about. What about you, then. I thought you were, er, you know. Married to your work and all. Transport and things.’

She flapped a hand ‘Yes. All of that. I don’t like it. Mostly. I don’t like… people, mostly. You know. I do… I mean... I think I could.’ She made a frustrated noise, ‘I don’t understand what it is, and it’s driving me utterly mad! Do you always feel like this? Do normal people feel like this?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like…’ she scrubbed her hands through her hair, then buried her forehead on her knees, ‘you’re perfectly normal. I can see that, but none of it makes sense. I've never been able to substitute you with other normal people, they’re no good, it has to be you. And then there’s your skin. It’s perfectly normal, no observable differences from anyone else’s, but when I touch it, or when you lean against me, it’s different, it’s like,’ she raised her head up to study her hand, the one that had been on my face, ‘it’s like it’s consistently overheated, but it isn’t, I’ve taken your temperature, and it’s perfectly within the range of a standard living body.’

I had a brief recollection of a restless night where I’d woken up convinced something cold and hard had been going in my ear. I now suspected the thermometer, and I repressed the urge to glare at Sherlock. Now was not the time.

‘You know those are fairly normal symptoms right?’ I said. I mean, she had to know. How could she not know?

‘Yes, I know in theory, but it always sounds so ridiculous. Like some stupid…radio... song that you’d listen to.’

‘You fancy me.’

‘Well, obviously that seems to be the issue.’

‘But… well… you must’ve been attracted to someone before, this can’t be completely new. What about Irene?’

‘Yes, well, this isn’t the same. I’m not reacting in the same way. I thought I could control it, override it, and I can’t.’

‘Ok, ok, listen, you don’t have to, ok? It’s ok, it’s good.’

‘"All good?”’ her glance was through her lashes, and there was a bit of teasing there, as her lips curled around the words I'd said to her, that first night, so many years ago.  

I smiled, ‘yeah, it really is. Here. D’you wanna… d’you want to try again?’

Sherlock hesitated.

‘It’s ok if you don’t want to. You don’t have to do anything, if you don’t want. Please don’t think… Listen, I’m gonna be here, even if everything just goes back to how it was yesterday, ok?’

Sherlock nodded. ‘I do… I do want to. But I didn’t know… you did. I didn’t know, Joan!’ She sounded genuinely distressed at the oversight. Which wasn’t that surprising, considering her usual powers of observation.

‘Hey, it’s ok. I kind of didn’t know either. I mean, maybe if I hadn’t been such an idiot. For… well… ever.’ My heart was doing a crazy thing, like it was dancing to a fiddler on speed. I was fucking terrified.

Then Sherlock was back to kneeling in front of me. I realised I was bracing myself against the chair. I thought maybe I should stop, but I couldn’t think of what else to do. I could see her eyes flicking back and forth, I could see the fleck of discolouration in her right iris, I could hear her sharp, shallow little breaths. I realised I might not be the only one who was terrified. I closed my eyes.

And then she was kissing me again. And it wasn’t half bad. She leant forward, and her fingers overlapped with mine where they leant on the arm rest, and her lips were soft and warm and…quite nice, really. I took a breath and let myself relax, let my lips slip open against hers, slid my left hand from under her fingers to reach behind her neck and pull her closer...

And then all of a sudden I was kissing Sherlock, and it wasn’t ‘quite nice’, it was fucking amazing. When I put my hand on her neck she made a little noise in the back of her throat and curled into my palm like she was a cat, and I could feel her little gasp in my mouth, and I thought, well in for a penny, in for a pound, and I saw if I couldn’t taste her bottom lip, and I could, and then there was her tongue, and her mouth, and I was probably insane but it seemed like the warmest, slipperiest most sickly delightful place I’d ever been. She was drawing me into her, and devouring me, and gripping my face with her hands, and whispering my name into my own mouth. And I was… I had my hands tangled in her hair, and I was allowed to touch it, allowed to run my palms along the satiny warmth of her neck, I and I didn’t have to pretend it was admiration, I didn’t have to wonder what it felt like, and it was brilliant, it was…

God, I was kissing Sherlock Holmes, and it was biggest fucking relief I’d ever felt in my entire life.

Then she had pulled away and rested her forehead against mine, and I could feel her arms shaking, where they were bracing against the chair back on either side of my head. She’d got one knee up on the chair, wedged between my left thigh and the chair arm, and the other was still on the ground, and she was just shaking. Her mouth was forming the words ‘this is ok’ over and over again.

‘Hey, Sherlock?’ I tried, ‘Sherlock, you alright there?’

‘Mph’ she nodded against my forehead, one hand still sort of wrapped behind my head, pushing us together.

‘Because you… you kinda don’t sound alright?’ I had a sudden flashback to the incident years ago in Irene Adler’s sitting room where Sherlock had just gone… a bit blank, ‘Hey, it’s ok if you want to… stop. We can, you know, take things slow.’

I felt a puff of air against me that may have been a laugh. I felt her inhale slowly, and then she rose up in one deliberate motion.

‘I’m… fine, Joan,’ she said, and smoothed her dressing gown with a prim little gesture ‘I… thank you.’

‘Hey cmon now,’ I said softly. Nothing more awkward than if she was going to be all polite about it. Bit sad, thanking people for kissing you, grim really, ‘Pleasure’s mine. Also yours… ideally.’

That got a twitch akin to a smile, and an eye roll, which was good, considering the circumstances.

‘Awful, Joan.’

‘Yeah, well.’

‘Tea?’

‘Ooof, yeah, sure just give me a minute to extract myself,’ I made a move to dislodge myself from the chair.

‘I’ll make it.’ Sherlock said, with a tight smile.

‘You’ll… you will?’ She was already mostly to the kitchen, ‘ruddy hell, I guess we can do that again then.’

She turned on her heel in the doorway to beam at me, and she pretty much looked exactly like a terrifyingly happy manic genius whose chin had disappeared under the force of the beaming, but it was excellent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) Joan's reading out one of the cryptic crossword clues, in case that isn't obvious


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joan settles in for a quiet evening, Sherlock has other ideas, which she makes known, eventually. Behold, smut. Fairly humorous smut, but smut nonetheless.

And then nothing happened. Well, I say nothing. What happened was we had tea as intended, and then Lestrade called. Of course he called, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that London’s criminal minds have a predictive sense for things like ‘delicate situations’, ‘date nights’, and ‘that one morning per month you can finally have a lie in’, and can back-date their crimes effectively so that NSY discovers them and rings you at precisely the least opportune moment. If only they’d turn to psychic services rather than murder, we’d all be much happier. Except Sherlock, of course. And probably, by extension, me, now that I think of it.

As such, things went all a bit mad for the remainder of the weekend and it seemed like I’d barely had the chance to fall into bed before I was dragging myself back into work.  I arrived home after nearly an hour in the Tube (that miraculous form of public transport which senses the desperation of those within it and slows down proportionately to prolong their agony) and managed to heat up something vaguely edible, after which point I nearly wept with joy to see that there was indeed a space on the sofa for me to collapse and succumb to the delights of thoroughly mindless telly. I’d even discovered one seemingly undisturbed package of popcorn and, by some miracle, a microwave devoid of anything offensive, or recently disemboweled, so I took advantage of this spectacular collusion of circumstances and settled in for a well-earned bond with the couch and the latest season of the Great British Bake Off (which, to be fair, had aired months ago, but such was my life).

It really warmed the cockles, to think that somewhere amidst the bunting and baking-tent of tv land, five amateur bakers tipped their mason jars, hoping to create a jam worthy of Mary Berry’s Victoria sponge, while here in the domestic haven of 221B, Sherlock perched at our worktop, scrutinising her own mason jars, which contained samples of hair that appeared to be melting, at different rates, into unappealing jelly-like tentacles. Who was that fool that said you couldn't have it all?

‘I’m catching up on Bake Off if you fancy it,’ I offered, when her hairjelly-related scribbling seemed to taper off.  She made a noncommittal noise which translated roughly as ‘I must imperiously deny any interest in your plebeian choice of entertainment but shall be deducing Paul Hollywood’s taste in knickers from the incandescence of his tan before you can say “soggy bottoms”’.

Sure enough, after about half a minute, Sherlock wandered in to occupy the remaining space on the couch. She was carrying the pretence of an article with her, but I knew there was a 70:30 chance it would soon be left by the wayside in favour of commenting on the programme. Of course I looked forward to it at this point – Sherlock was to my telly-watching like Marmite was to my toast – unpalatable to some, but pretty much the most flavourful part, from my perspective.

Tonight seemed to be an ‘actually reading the article night’, or so it appeared, so I settled back in.

And yet… not long into my enjoyably commentary-free cookery watching experience, I noticed that something was slightly off. For starters, Sherlock had not turned a page since she had sat down - unusual, considering that her reading speed was usually just short of ‘scanner’. In fact, she seemed a bit frozen except for the occasional sideways flicking of her eyes, but she wasn’t watching the programme either.

It was the fourth time I reached for the popcorn when I confirmed that, indeed, it wasn’t my imagination - Sherlock’s eyes had been twitching back and forth nervously every time I did. Every time I moved, actually. As soon as I realised it, I froze, hand still poised to descend upon the popcorn. I turned to look at her. Yup, she was staring like a startled meercat.

I sat back up. ‘Sorry. Was I bothering you?’

She didn’t say anything. Right. ‘D’you want some?’ I gestured at the popcorn. No reaction. Excellent. I turned my attention back to the telly, wondering idly if the microwave _had_ been host to some noxious substance after all, and Sherlock was just waiting for its effects to take hold.

‘I have it on good authority,’ Sherlock began, ‘That the combination of certain on-demand based streaming video content providers, and leisure activity in the company of another person is commonly used as a euphemism for sexual activity.’

Shame, I really shouldn’t have gone for more popcorn. I coughed and it all went flying out of my hand, ‘Sorry, come again?’

‘This,’ Sherlock gestured at the screen, ‘Netflix. And this,’ she gestured more vaguely at us on the couch.

‘Netflix is. Yes it’s Netflix. Netflix and. Oh. Netflix and chill?’ I bit back a laugh, ‘Oh god, you thought I was trying to seduce you or something? God, no, just wanted to, you know, rot my brain a bit.’1

‘Oh.’

‘Oh. Sorry. I mean. Did you want me to… you know…’

Sherlock sniffed something akin to ‘dontberidiculous’ and drew up her knees. Right.

‘C’mere you big dafty,’ I shoved over and put my arm round her shoulders, pulling her towards me. Seeing as how she’d still got her knees all bundled up to her chest, she tipped over a bit like one of those squat Russian nesting dolls, but didn’t protest. She sort of nestled her head into the crook of my shoulder, and then over the next five minutes, continued to insinuate herself into every amount of personal space I had until she was more or less curled up around me, in the manner of a very enthusiastic ivy plant. She’d got one arm round my stomach and the other behind me and her thumb was absentmindedly petting the fat on my hip. Ok. Belly. Hip. Combination. Which wasn’t exactly the part of my body I was particularly thrilled about having attention drawn to, but she seemed content so I didn’t say anything.2

Another ten minutes of the program went along and then I felt something wet press gently against my neck, accompanied by a thrill of delight that made itself known all the way down my spine. I froze. It happened again. I attempted to restart my breathing. Sherlock’s mouth continued a delicate progression tracing the soft bits of my neck and collarbone. By the time she had made it to the bit under my ear, I was as goosefleshy as a Dickensian Christmas dinner. I had no doubt she noticed. She must have been well chuffed.

‘Joan,’ she murmured against my skin.

‘Yeah?’ I croaked.

‘When your program is done, can we try the other thing?’

‘Oh it’s…it’s done.’ I fumbled around for the remote without turning my head.

Sherlock hummed a little and pressed her teeth delicately into my neck, as though she was just…testing. I felt her tongue flick against my skin, and I knew she was tasting it. That thought escaped as a desperate sort of noise in the back of my throat. I could feel Sherlock’s pleased smile against me as she planted more kisses on the spot, following up til she was under my jaw. I turned my head then so I could catch her mouth with mine and it was sloppy, because I already felt like my skin had gone a bit electric, so our teeth clashed a bit when our mouths met. She made a whimpering noise but it must have been good, it was good, because she retaliated with more enthusiasm. Which I was surprised to find possible.

She had a sort of insatiable restlessness to her, and kept moving from my lips to my neck to my jaw and eyes and ears, and it was making me a bit dizzy, but I found I really didn’t care.

She was saying something against the corner of my mouth.

‘Mmm…Sorry’

‘You’re so much nicer than Sean.’3

I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, ‘er, thanks, I guess.’

‘Shh, no, Joan it’s a good thing, a very good thing. I didn’t like kissing much at all with him. He was too difficult to contain. It was hard to get him to stop, and I needed him to stop. And he didn’t taste right.’

‘Hang on, Are you saying you like me because I’m malleable?’ because _that_ was the disturbing part of the whole previous monologue...

‘No, I don’t want to stop _you_. You’re good. You taste like… you. It’s delectable.’ Nice tasty, kissable word that.

To punctuate, she put her glistening lips on mine and in went her tongue. A whole lot of it. The small part of my brain that was still online was wondering whether or not she was aware that she was, at this point, basically having sex with my mouth. With her mouth. Enthusiastic, slippery, dirty sex. If that in anyway makes sense. And then I realised I still didn’t know what kind of experience she had other than… kissing Sean (kissing Sean unenthusiastically, apparently, but no doubt with the same skill that was now focused on me).

I was both far too tingly and starting to develop a crick in my neck, so I decided I’d better take measures into my own hands a bit, at least before Sherlock started cataloguing my fillings or something. My hands were already somewhere around her upper arms, so I pushed forwards a bit, and leant in a bit and by some miracle she actually behaved and uncurled backwards onto the couch. Problem was, I was now on top of her and god, I had no idea what to do. I settled for kissing her neck, which she seemed to like, but an irrational wave of terror shot through me. I would mess up. Why did I think I could do this in the first place? I had no experience with women, and Sherlock knew bloody everything, so she would probably point out my fumbling around before I even got started, or even… god what if she didn’t know and then I was just subjecting her to some horrible clueless form of sex and it would probably be awful and she might not even like it and then that would definitely make everything horrendous, or worse if she didn’t say anything at all, but she deserved better than that, she should at least have someone who had some bleeding clue what they-

‘Joan, stop worrying about it, you’ll be fine.’

‘Wha? I wasn’t-’

‘Yes, you were thinking so loudly Mrs. Hudson could probably hear you, and she’s a bit deaf in the right ear. I’ll have you know I-’ she heaved out a breath. I felt it against my diaphragm, ‘This is not one of the areas where I have much… particular… expertise. At all.’

‘Right. I er wondered that. I’m not. Exactly. Well, it’s not that I’ve done this myself either.’

She raised an eyebrow.

‘With women. Jesus. Unless there’s something else you haven’t told me.’

‘No. Joan. I’m definitely _not_ a man. Sorry to disappoint.’

‘No! God no. Please. You’re not disappointing me. I don’t want you to be. A man. Ok? I’m just a bit nervous. I don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘Well that makes two of us then. Matched set,’ she flashed a tight smile.4

‘Right about that,’ I muttered and shimmied up her chest a bit, ‘alright, now I’m going to kiss you a bit.’

‘Joan? This may not be my main area, but I’m pretty sure this will go better if you shut up.’

‘Sorry, just… talking.’

‘Yes, less of that. More of the lips.’

‘Bossy.’

‘Obvious.’

She shuffled down into the couch like she was nesting there, and now beamed up at me with what could only be described as…

Well what seemed to be…

Affection. A really glowing variety of it.

Ok, ok, I’d seen it before. And if we’re being honest, when it appeared it normally was directed at me. It was just… in this context it meant something else, didn’t it. It meant a bit more. I swallowed suddenly over what had become a rather lumpy feeling in my throat.

‘Catching on finally?’

‘Something like that,’ I muttered, and put my lips to hers.

I thought about all the things I couldn’t say to her, didn’t say. All the things I couldn’t even say to myself. I thought about how indispensible her presence was in my life, how indescribably and imperfectly essential she was to my continued state of sanity. I thought of all the times I’d hated myself for not being able to say any of it, even when I thought – knew – that it was my last chance, that if I didn’t say it now, I would never say it, and she would never know.

I thought about how I hoped, in spectacular cowardice, that she would be bright enough to know anyway, and had tried to convince myself that it was enough, when I knew it wasn’t.

I still hoped a bit like that now, hoped she could tell from how I was kissing her, and from how I held her face in my hands. Smooth, so smooth, her alien skin, the fine hairs of her eyebrows and temples, the hair that was live and perfect, and not broken, and not caked with blood.

Drawing back for a second to look at her, I caught the febrile tremors fluttering through her eyelashes, the lucidity of her closed eyelids , and it the sight in it’s fragility of it made my throat catch. Why had I thought to leave this beautiful, breakable thing? Why had I assumed it would always be alright, that of all things, Sherlock would be permanent, and therefore, could be assumed, could be – nearly – wasted?

I had small hands, square sort of practical hands, but the features of her face still nearly fit between them. How could I ever have been stupid enough to gamble this?

I put my thumb on her lips and her eyes flickered opened, ‘Joan?’

I smiled wetly at her, ‘Just glad you’re… here.’

She smiled and nipped my thumb, ‘Sentiment.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Me too.’

She wove her arms up through mine and traced around my face and neck with her fingers. When she got to my shoulder, she stopped.

‘Can I see your scar?’

‘Er. Yeah. Sure. If you want. Go for it.’ I was pretty sure she’d already seen it before anyway. I leant up for a second and pulled off my top. Sherlock’s lips formed a little ‘o’ and I realised she hadn’t meant that, exactly. Shit, I must be nervous. Get a grip, Watson. Well too late now. I was silently thankful that the laundry cycle had forced me to wear a nice bra, rather than the tatty one I normally bummed around the house in.

‘Er… too much?’

Sherlock shook her head, eyes dashing over me. Nothing she hadn’t seen before, but still. The thought that I was half naked in front of her, half naked _for_ her sent a new wave of tingling awareness across my skin. It was as if I could feel her eyes as they moved across me. She reached up and traced a delicate finger round and about the discoloured crater in my shoulder, her fingerprint ghosting over the indentation, hovering as if it might fit there, might complete it again. Every now and again I could feel a warm stream of her breath on my cleavage, and it made me feel very exposed, and not as cold as I ought to have felt wearing just trousers and a bra. It also made me feel like her lips might be nice there, and I was still reminding myself that it was alright for me to think that when her fingers progressed away from the scar and down my chest, her knuckles tracing a feather-light v around the edge of my bra, brushing the soft skin between my breasts. She did it again with the pads of her fingers, just pressing in the smallest amount, that I wanted to squirm into. It was an unfamiliar sensation, most blokes had a sense of what to do which was much more ...manual and grabby. This was like… she was actually paying attention to me. And my skin. Which was nice. But it also would have been nice if she’d got on with some proper gropage in the near future before my dodgy shoulder gave out from being propped up over her.

‘Sherlock... It would be more comfortable if… we could move to the bedroom? Yours? Or mine? If you wanted?’

She flattened a burning palm against my chest, over my heart, then scraped it slowly across my sternum and up my neck, until my head was tilted upwards. Her fingers crawled their way between my lips and teeth.

I shivered.

‘Mine is closer,’ she said, then dragged me down to kiss her, fingers slipping between our tongues. Like she knew.

I may have whimpered a bit.

She may have heard me, because I suddenly became aware that she was squirming slightly, grinding against my thigh. I also realised that I was pretty much doing the same thing. And that… that was a thought.

She put both hands on my shoulders and pushed me off.

‘Bed, Watson!’

I rolled my eyes, ‘At ease, maniac,’ and climbed off her. I gathered up my shirt and held out a hand to help her up. Despite her… somewhat transparent attempt at imperious bravado, she looked a bit fuzzy. She took my hand and was up with the slightest wobble. I saw her glance at our joined hands, then at me. That was an affirmative on the whole ‘neither of us have a fucking clue what we’re doing’. I tentatively lead her to her room. Which was a bit weird, seemed it should be the other way around, but never mind.  I was gratified to find that there were no mummified remains on the bed, just the accoutrements of a normal bed, thank fuck for that.

‘Should I erm, should I take my clothes off?’ Sherlock asked in a near whisper.

‘Eh? Whatever you want. I mean. You usually just… do it as you go along, you know? God, Sean really was useless wasn’t he.’

‘Trust me, I _really_ didn’t want him to be any more useful than he already was.’

‘Right, that’s just. Here. Let me.’ I reached up, and kissed her, and shucked off her dressing gown and laid it on the chair by her desk, kissing her collarbone a bit in the process. She was wearing her pyjamas underneath, striped cotton trousers and a wide necked grey t-shirt that exposed most of her shoulders. She seemed to be a bit finicky about things on her neck that weren’t her scarf, actually. I’d have to make sure she didn’t mind being kissed there… and things. I liked her neck, especially the bit at the back and sides where the skin went almost transparent as it blended into the feathery strands of her hair. It was the kind of texture I wanted to feel against my lips. I kissed the hollow of her throat, and pulled her forward gently so I could follow the mesmerising smoothness of it up her neck. She made a shaky sort sighing noise and leaned into me when I did, and I could feel the muscles moving beneath her thin skin.  I flicked my tongue out against it, and then drew back, feeling slightly shaky myself.

‘I’m gonna… take my jeans off, if that’s ok? They’re sort of uncomfortable… in bed. I can run and get my pyjama’s if you-‘ Sherlock shot me a look that made it more than apparent that pyjamas were not only unnecessary, but their presence would be found offensive. ‘Ok, just offering.’ I took off my jeans, fighting the urge to turn my back and do it, ‘sorry about the er floral knickers.’ I saw Sherlock’s lip twitch.

 I figured one of us had to take the plunge, so I pulled back the duvet (thank god, nothing there but the sheet) and climbed in.

Sherlock reached the edge of the bed, and then seemed a bit frozen.

‘Well come on, get it,’ I said offering my hand again, ‘I mean, if you want to. Obviously you can still… you know… kick me out.’

Sherlock’s eyes gave a little jump as she came back online. Then at once the bed was full of a lot of wriggling Sherlock, as were my arms, and all the bits of empty space in between them. ‘Why would I ever kick you out?’ she said into my neck, before nibbling her way up to my pulse point.

‘Mph. The mind boggles.’

She had managed to wrap herself around me again so there was quite a lot of squirming and kissing and my hands had more or less gone on autopilot, skimming up and around her back and sides, which I didn’t notice until I grabbed her bum to press her closer against me and then she gave a little ‘mph’. I released her immediately, and pressed my guilty palms on the bedcovers.

‘Sorry, wasn’t thinking.’

She rolled her eyes, picked up my hands and replaced them, ‘Silly Joan, of all the times to start thinking…’ and squirmed up closer to me.

When my hand migrated up a bit towards her waist again, Sherlock rolled over, and pulled me round so I was on top of her.

‘You have to tell me… if anything’s not ok. If it’s too much, or if you want me to stop. Alright?’

Sherlock huffed, ‘when have I _ever_ done something I didn’t want to do?’ Which was true, although I was still a bit concerned about her whole ‘body is transport’ philosophy. Along with the fact that I was still in a bit of shock that she actually liked sex things. And that she’d specifically choose to direct them at me.

‘Ok, just…checking’. I tried feeling her stomach a bit and that was nice. It was very smooth, and I wondered if she waxed it, but then I thought she’d be just the kind of person who wouldn’t have any body hair in awkward places. Stomach and hipbones and little shivers, that was nice. And then a bit higher and oh god.

‘You’re… not wearing a bra.’

‘No.’

Right. So now I was… touching someone else’s breasts. I hadn’t really meant to already, but it seemed a bit rude to recoil now. I still didn’t know exactly what Sherlock had done before, but the last thing I wanted to do was to make her feel like I didn’t want to be here, or that she wasn’t ok. Because she really, really was.

And it’s not that I wanted to recoil. Actually it was nice. It was… more than nice. It did feel a bit illicit though, like I shouldn’t be allowed to do it, to feel the soft flesh that was… someone else’s. God. Was Sherlock’s. I kept waiting for someone to descend and tell me I wasn’t allowed to want this, to have this, to enjoy this. Turns out there are no sex police on hand to fine you for saying you were straight for twenty-odd years. There was just me, and Sherlock, and my knuckles brushing patterns across her skin and her tongue licking needy little noises into my mouth.

And then I reached around to shuffle my arms around her waist and… stopped.

Sherlock, too, froze, her eyes wide opened.

I’d forgotten, temporarily, about the scars that now crisscrossed her back, and I could feel their unfamiliar corrugation under my fingers.

‘Does it hurt?’

She shook her head.

‘Do you mind?’

She swallowed, and shook her head again.

‘God, Sherlock,’ my voice broke a bit, and I rested my forehead on her chest, ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘You’ve said. And. I said. Don’t be. Not your fault.’

‘I know.’

‘You… kissed me. Didn’t you. When I’d come home from hospital.’

‘Yeah. Yeah. I did. Didn’t realise you noticed. Don’t know what I was thinking.’ I had pressed my lips once against her shoulder, all the freckle constellations scratched out by bright pink scars.

She smiled, ‘You never do. Happily, I don’t mind. Joan?’

‘Hmmm?’

‘You can take my shirt off now.’

‘Oh. Ok.’ I did. She wriggled back into the pillows like a happy cat, arms over her head. She wasn’t actually as bony as I’d expected. Which was a good thing. She was small, up top, but everything was very soft and somehow enticing, how the light pooled down into her stomach and the slight motion of her breasts as she breathed, all warm and exposed and… waiting … for me. I wanted to press my lips into the soft skin around her navel so… I did. And up round her ribcage and all around the soft skin on her breasts oh god and her nipples, which were so… well… pink. And shivery. It was funny being with another woman actually, because I was aware of everything I was doing so much more… sympathetically, almost as if it were happening to me too.

I was just wondering why I still had my bra on, when Sherlock reached round and unhooked it. First go. Another thing about being with ladies, I guess.   I manoevered my arms out of it and she laid back looking at me. I had the slightly hysterical notion that I was probably witnessing the creation of a mind palace room for my tits.

‘Fascinating,’ said Sherlock. I decided that, from her, it was a compliment. She rolled me over, started on my neck, and progressed her way down my body, in a process that was half mouth, half her rubbing her face against my skin. She’d also taken to licking bits of it, which was… incredibly arousing. And frustrating.

‘I love this,’ she said, teeth scraping against my stomach, ‘delightful.’ I laughed, and she sucked on the skin. When she ran her tongue along the waistband of my pants I whimpered.

She looked up at me with a bright smile, and hooked her index fingers at the top edge.

‘May I?’

I nodded. She shucked them off, and then divested herself of her trousers as well. She wasn’t wearing any pants underneath. My eyes flicked away before I remembered that I was allowed to look at her. That I was probably supposed to be looking at her. Right. I figured I should probably try not to look like I was just curious about what she… did… down there. And clearly failed, as she gave me a look that said I was being an idiot, and could do whatever I liked.

She had sat back a bit and was, again, looking at me with calculated fascination. She pushed my legs apart some and settled between them, tilting her head this way and that. She trailed her fingers up and down my calves and then up my thighs. I was holding my breath at this point and felt about as naked as I had ever felt in my life. Her fingers skated up my inner thighs and drifted over my pubic hair, just barely touching it. She smiled a little.

She was studying me. I knew she was. There may have been a few moments in the past when I may or may not have conjured her up as I was alone in bed taking care of things (it was boredom, I’d told myself, over 15 years of coming up with your own fantasies and you eventually exhaust most of the titillating topics, so your definitely off limits but deliciously mad and sometimes half naked flatmate with a slight oral fixation is bound to come up). In these, a vision of Sherlock in observation mode had occasionally intruded to kill the mood by making some horrific deduction based the state of my pubic hair upkeep and effectively ending said fantasy.

To my surprise and delight, I discovered being the subject of Sherlock’s real life scrutiny had almost the opposite effect. Perhaps because her real life scrutiny was carried out with her fingers and – lord in heaven – mouth.

She’d scooted down a bit further and pressed her lips on the inside of my thigh, just above my knee. A wave of horrified pleasure sidled up the affected nerve as I realised that I hadn’t bothered to shave my legs for… oh dear. I’m not sure for how long. Sherlock removed her lips and pressed her forehead against my leg, nuzzling it. ‘Is this making you uncomfortable?’

‘What? No.’

‘You froze just there.’

‘Oh er. Yeah. Just realised I er forgot to shave my legs. Sorry about that.’

Sherlock laughed outright, and licked a stripe all the way up the top of my (slightly fuzzy) thigh, before settling back into her previous position.

‘So this doesn’t bother you then?’ she said, lips against my well-honed collection of upper leg cellulite.

‘Not as such,’ I squeaked. Her lips eased higher.

‘And this?’ her voice was hazy.

‘V- very ok. Definitely. Ok.’

Her eyes were closed again as she leant against my skin, I could feel her eyelashes flutter across it. I was reminded briefly of a cat and catnip.

‘Joan,’ she breathed. She had nearly reached my hip joint.

‘Yeah?’ I reached down and slipped my hand into her hair. She leant into that too.

‘I want you to know… there’s something… I’ve been meaning to say…’ she paused and licked more nibbling kisses into my skin. Her next breath felt almost like a sob.

‘Hey? Sherlock?’ I petted her hair, willing her to look up.

She turned her forehead into my skin again, and muttered something into it.

‘Hmmm?’

‘It’s good. You being here. Home. I’m glad. I …’ she kissed me again, and it was almost a bite, ‘I missed you. God, I missed you, I-’ she sucked in another breath, and I felt her forehead scrunching up, where it was pressed against my leg.

‘Hey, I missed you too. I missed you… all the time. Even when I should have probably been worrying about… other things. Always do,’ I said. And suddenly there they were. There were words in my mouth now, three of them, wondering if it was time to come out. Ok, I’d already said them, we’d all said them, but that was back then we were passing them off as their lighter platonic version.

Sherlock slid a hand up to cover mine where it was petting her hair. ‘Joan, you know I… that I…’ she sucked on my skin. Her fingers dug into mine. I whimpered.

‘Yeah I do. I know. I do.’ I babbled, fumbling to weave my fingers through hers, hoping she’d know that I did know, hoping she’d know I _did_ too.

She didn’t say it out loud, but I could feel it, two words against me – the slip of the tongue, the whisper of teeth meeting lower lip, the rounded kiss of a vowel.

 _love you_ _love you love you_

(sartorius, gracilis, iliopsoas tendon)

I could’ve wept, but settled for clinging onto her hand.

‘May I, Joan?’ She whispered one last time, and I could feel the humid warmth of her breath across my… well, my… you know.

‘Please.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP Bake off :( 
> 
> (1) I'm not sure why Sherlock would know about this particular vernacularism, but I'll blame it on her internet perusing. One can always invent a case. For instance, as reported by the Daily Mail: 'Netflix and KILL! Night in turns DEADLY as lad turns laptop into murder weapon!' (n.b. this is not a real Daily Mail headline. I hope.)
> 
> (2) Joan may not always be the paragon of body positivity, but Sherlock is a fan, as are we. Long live Joan's gloriously amorphous stomach-hip-thigh zone!
> 
> (3) Again, Sean is Janine, I've switched the gender. Kind of prefer Janine as Janine, really, so may change it back, but, what can I say, this was an experiment.
> 
> (4) I owe this phrasing to several works in the fandom I've come across, mainly apliddell's 'The Only One in the World; I Invented the Job'. I have no idea if this phrase ever pops up in the actual canon, but it caught in my brain. 
> 
>  
> 
> .....
> 
> So I've upped my chapters, as this smut bit got really long. Should finish up in another chapter or, at most, two, anyway.
> 
> I tried to incorporate some elements of Joan's ongoing interaction with her own sexuality, I think she's surprising herself as she goes along. But not in the 'Upon the touch of Sherlock's lips, John discovered that he was ragingly gay, after having utterly no clue previously. He also discovered that he had fab deep-throating skills on the first go' way.
> 
> Nonetheless, you may notice the presence of a few of your more familiar Johnlock tropes, I was curious to see what they would be like with my femlock characters.  
> Incidentally, when I mentioned the 'last chapter which isn't finished', it's the next one. Basically this is the sex scene that never ends. Unless I opt for fanfic over work (which could happen), it'll probably take more than a day to appear.


	6. Chapter 6

She gently disentangled her hand from mine and spread me open with the same kind of delicacy she normally reserved for the most sensitive of documents.

‘ _Joan_ ,’ she breathed, the heat pooling from her lips to caress my skin. She drew the knuckle of her index finger up the contours of my… parts, then again with the pad of her fingers, dragging symmetrical paths up left and right, and then back down. It was the point where I’d normally turn my attention to the ceiling –life’s no porno, and I’ve no particular fetish for watching someone delve into my sex parts – but I couldn’t look away. Sherlock’s eyes were lit with a ravenous fascination I’d only seen her direct at the most convoluted of puzzles, the most locked of locked-room mysteries, the most inexplicable of aberrations, in short, when it was criminal Christmas. And now here she was unravelling me like I was all those rolled in to one. It was disarming. In all my encounters with, what I would call, a respectable number of chaps, including the one I disastrously married, I’ve never had someone look at any part of me with such bare captivation or delight.

Her lips parted, and a small part of my mind begged her not to break in with some spectacular observation at this particular juncture. Especially not if it involved Latin terminology.

Instead, in an instant, I felt the first tentative heat of her tongue, as it slid out to trace the same path her fingers had taken. Two slips, and she gave a little strangled sigh of delight. I realised she was tasting me. In tiny tickling laps, and broad slippery decadent silken sweeps, she was tasting me, mapping every centimetre of me with her tongue, and beautiful, glowing, kneading lips. It was liquid pleasure, it was terrifying, enthralling, inescapable. I was done for.

When she finally deigned to draw the trickling delight of her mouth across my _oh dear god_ , all the breath I’d apparently been holding came rushing out in something that sounded a bit too much like a sob. She looked up, all eyelashes and glowing cheekbones and delighted eyes.

‘Alright?’

‘Yeah. Yes. Very. Alright. Please don’t stop.’

The smallest whisper of a smirk drew up one corner of her mouth.

‘Shut up,’ I hissed, and the smirk caught the other side of her lips as well.

‘As you say, Joan,’ she bloody well purred, and then her mouth was on me again.

Oh yes, I was definitely done for. When she delicately sucked my _sweet Jesus bollocksing Christ_ between her lips, I nearly wept with pleasure. When she unabashedly slid her tongue inside me, I felt more exposed than I ever had in my life, but could do nothing but quiver into the unthinkable, wet decadence of the intrusion. Her thumbs were pressing symmetrical spirals into the uppermost reaches of my thigh, and some idiot was gasping an overture of sounds vaguely resembling the names of deities, and ‘Sherlock’. Oh god, that idiot was definitely me, and definitely wasn’t stopping anytime soon.

One of her hands had moved from my leg, and her fingers eased their way into me. One, two, three. Sherlock moaned outright as she sucked the throbbing apex of my clit between her lips and danced her tongue across it. I came, without warning, and without realising it was coming on until I was writhing obscenely against her mouth and fingers, and invoking every known deity plus several spontaneously invented ones.

...

When I re-entered a vague sense of awareness, Sherlock had stilled her tongue, but was still sort of… petting my insides. Her lips still rested gently against me.

 ‘Oh. God. Sorry,’ I gasped, ‘that was… that was… didn’t mean to… to come. There…’ I could feel her pleased smile, and a puff of warm breath skated across my skin, eliciting a pleasurable aftershock, I squirmed.

‘I thought that was rather the point,’ she said, wiggling her fingers a little.

‘Ha, oh lord,’ I ran my (shaky) hand across my (sweaty) face, ‘Can you come up here?’

‘If you insist. You’re very warm inside, I enjoy it.’

I bit off a hysterical laugh, ‘Ha. Yes. Clocked that.’ I was pretty sure clocking that had largely been what put me over the edge, ‘Up here, love.’

Sherlock shimmied up my body, fingers ghosting over my clit as she slid them out of me.

I was reminded again of how very, very nice it was to feel her breasts against mine. And her skin, in general.

‘Hey.’ I whispered, and wrapped my arm round her neck so I could kiss her. She sighed against my mouth, seemingly discovering the same thing I had about her skin against mine.

‘Joan, your… pupils… are… very dilated,’ she enunciated rather haphazardly in between kisses.

‘Yeah. So are yours, genius,’ I laughed softly, and brought my hands up to cup her face between them.

‘Can I- can I- will you let me- What do you want? Do you want me to? Anything you want – I mean, I have no idea what I’m doing, but…’

‘Anything. Just you. You is... are… good.’

‘Good. Good. Lie back, will you? Lie back… there. God you’re… you’re gorgeous, you know? I’ve always thought you were. Unbelievably. Ludicrously. Gorgeous.’ I ran my fingers across her eyebrows and cheekbones and lips, and kissed them, and that gorgeous neck. I could smell the piney sweetness of her shampoo, and the summery heat of her damp skin. The skin of her neck was taut and soft like a fruit against my lips, it was warm and pulsing and slightly salty, and I wanted to devour her. I moulded my mouth against her skin, and licked the delicate hollow of her collarbones, and pulled her nipples into my mouth until their shift from soft and silky to slick and hard was permanently emblazoned on my tongue.

‘If you.. if you… if you don’t know what to do, Joan, you could’ breathed Sherlock, ‘You could do it, like you do to yourself. Do it to me. I want to know. I want to know what you do.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes, I’ve wondered for ages.’

‘Ok. Ok.’

I turned her on her side and rolled her against me and reached round her hip and slid my fingers through the auburn curls at the crux of her legs.

‘Jesus you’re… really wet.’ I swallowed, fingers insinuating themselves between the folds of her skin.

Sherlock whimpered. ‘I’ve… been led to understand that it’s a normal ... physiological reaction to stimuli.’

‘Yeah. It’s… good, you’re…oh god…’ she had made another desperate noise as my fingers slipped over her. I could feel a tremor move through her body.

It was a familiar and unfamiliar sensation at the same time, familiar anatomy but someone else’s body, shuddering against my fingertips.

‘Is this… is this what you do Joan?’ Sherlock whispered raggedly.

‘Yeah.’

‘When you’re alone, in your room, like this?’ She curled her hand over mine as I caressed her, following my motions.

‘Yeah, just like this.’

‘What do you… what do you think of?’

‘Oh god. I think of. God I don’t know, it depends… I … you know what, I’m not telling you that.’

‘But I want to know. I want to know everything.’

‘Ha, I bet you do.’ I whispered, and bit her ear.

She sighed, ‘Oh I will Joan, you’ll tell me. You’ll tell me everything, you always do,’ she was really just breathing around the syllables now.

‘I’ve a thought. Can I… Can I put my mouth on you?’

‘Why?’

‘Because… because it’s what I like more than anything. As you may have noticed. And I think if I had a choice, I’d rather that than somebody messily getting me off with their stubby GP fingers.’

‘I’m finding your stubby GP fingers more than adequate. But yes. Anything.’ She squirmed around and captured my mouth in a kiss whose haphazardness suggested how far gone she was. I worked my way down her body, making sure to pay at least cursory homage to her ribcage (more biscuits advised), navel (shivery, delightful), outcrop of hipbone (more shivering), and the nearly invisible filaments of hair tracing down her stomach (nearly invisible, lucky sod).

‘No promises on this,’ I said, and kissed her inner thigh.

‘I’ve utmost faith in you.’

‘Ta.’ I dove in.

She tasted clean and musky and salty, none of which was really that foreign, but all of which was surprisingly intoxicating (my addled brain supplied something to do with _pheromones, compatible immunities,_ and _definitely not so straight after all_ which I could not be arsed to parse in full). I wasn’t about to go for the whole exploratory tour that Sherlock had done, it was too late in the game, for starters, but I thought I would give a try to whatever she had done that had put me over the edge, and ended up sort of making love to her with my mouth, because I adored her, and I was drunk on the plush, slipping, fullness of her skin against my tongue, and transfixed by the enraptured sounds that hissed across her lips every time I touched her, like a rhythmic prayer.

I worked my hands underneath her, gripping her body, and lost myself in her until her fingers dug into my arms, and her legs locked around me in a convulsing embrace, and I thought perhaps I might drown in her, but I would have been perfectly happy.

…

‘So what _is_ it you think about?’ Sherlock said after a few minutes.

‘You’re serious? I thought that was just a bid for some dirty talk.’

Sherlock snorted, ‘why on earth would I want to engage in such a blatantly contrived bi-product of the pornography market, and one which you clearly wouldn’t be comfortable with?’

‘Oh thank god, I can tell you right now, it’s really not in my repertoire. Had a boyfriend who fancied it once and I couldn’t keep a straight face past the first sentence.’

‘Yes, if the writing on your blog is anything to go by, I can only imagine the carnage,’ she said contentedly, burying her face deeper into my skin.

‘Yeah, sure, you love it,’ I said, happily discovering a rogue pillow near at hand to whack her with.

‘Sorry, Joan,’ she turned to me, and I saw she was nearly weeping with laughter.

‘No you’re not, you berk.’

‘No I’m really not.’

‘Actually, I’m surprised, I kinda figured you’d be the one who would narrate your way through the entire encounter. I felt sure the phrase “cunnilingus” was going to make a horrible appearance.’

‘Why on earth would I do that?’

I raised an eyebrow, ‘Well, if my leaving the house or, in some cases, the country, hasn’t stopped you from carrying on conversing with me…’

Sherlock’s gaze shifted away, ‘I’m well aware that my verbalisations are likely to be off-putting in these…’ she waved her hand, ‘situations. I have been informed. I therefore made an effort to desist.’

‘What do you mean, “informed”?’

‘Honestly Joan, what do you think? I told you my experience was negligible, not non-existent. You’ve made a herculean effort to socialise me, for which your knighthood is no doubt forthcoming, but I’m sure even you can imagine how the average idiot would react to me in my unaltered state.’

‘Woah, easy there. First off, I’m not trying to domesticate you, or whatever, and you know it. I won’t lie, I definitely appreciate the fact that we’ve been banned from considerably fewer of London’s institutions in the past couple years than at the start, but I thought you were bloody brilliant from uncensored Day One. Second, you know what, next time we do this, presuming you want a next time (Sherlock’s eyes went heavenward, as though beseeching the gods, or more likely her periodic table, to spare her from my general obtuseness) you talk all you bloody well want, ok? Because, with all due respect, whoever gave you the impression that you aren’t perfectly irresistible as you are can respectfully go fuck themselves with the nearest rusty object.’

‘Ouch, tetanus,’ she considered, with apparent approbation.

‘As well they deserve.’

‘Thank you, Joan. Unnecessary, but thank you.’

‘Of course.’

‘This will be far more practical. While I excel at multi-tasking, I nonetheless had to devote an inconvenient amount of attention to self-restraint and I fear I could have missed out on essential data.’

‘So I take it you want to try this again sometime, then.’

‘Of course, I wouldn’t have suggested it unless I could predict within a 98% accuracy that the encounter would be successful enough to warrant repetition. And you really shouldn’t refer to it as “trying”, it’s misleading.’

‘You can’t have known that, you never know until you try with a person, I might have been perfectly awful.’

She rolled her eyes, ‘Impossible. I have ample observations from your previous relationships to indicate that you have adequate interest and skill range, in addition to your fixation on keeping your partner content, which I’ll admit I found baffling in the past, but have no problem using to my advantage now. In addition, while I was aware that you hadn’t taken part in this before, and certainly lack the same level of detail orientation as I possess, I was able to chart a projection of your oral dexterity from inference based on your speech patterns and articulation, your nervous habit of lingual-labial lubrication, in addition to-’

‘Ok, ok, I get the picture. Just so you know, I’m taking that as “I like you well enough to convince myself it’s worth it no matter what”.’

Sherlock issued a little ‘hmph’, but surprisingly refrained from a rebuttal.

‘Ridiculous,’ I kissed the top of her head, and thought I may have heard her mutter ‘idiot’ into my collarbone.

‘I er… I love you too, you know.’ I whispered, after a moment, my lips against her hair. The only response I got at first was the tightening of her hands, which were around my waist. Then I felt her lips press gently against my ribcage, hovering directly over my heart.

‘and I think…’ I continued, ‘well, I think this is it for me. If that’s alright by you. There’s not going to be anyone else for me. Not sure why I ever thought there could be. Just you.’

Sherlock nodded against me, remaining cocooned in my limbs. After a few minutes, I thought she might just stay there. But then she gingerly extracted herself to bring her eyes level with mine, and placed one of her long hands on either side of my face. She sipped in air, as though she might speak, and when she didn’t, I wondered if the words had gotten stuck somewhere in her head. It had happened before. At last, she spoke, ‘It always has been, for me. You. Always you. Only you.’

‘I know that, finally. And now I know what it means. I’m sorry I didn’t know it before, but I do now, and I swear I won’t let you down again. I’m with you,’ I leaned forward to brush my lips across hers. ‘I’m not saying we won’t both drive each other round the twist sometimes, but I’ve tried that whole “leaving you” bollocks enough, and it was utter rubbish, so I’m more than content never to try that again, if it’s all the same to you.’

She leaned into my lips for a while, and then broke away, ‘Does this mean you’re rescinding your ridiculous fingers in the crisper rule?’

‘No, it bloody doesn’t! Do not even _think_ of taking this as a challenge.’

‘I…’ I could see her actually thinking about it. Of course she was bloody thinking about it. ‘Ah. No, I won’t. I… you are essential to me,’ she paused. ‘I may… I may… do it wrong sometimes, Joan. I’m not… you know relationships aren’t my… my area.’ It seemed she had been working out her own likelihood of destroying us just because it was in her power. She, and everyone else who’d ever suspected they were their own worst enemy, although few people had quite the skillset of offense that Sherlock had. On the other hand, few people would ever to go the lengths she had to preserve a friend’s life and happiness – once tapped, her well of self-sacrifice on my behalf was more like a geyser.

‘Sherlock. I wouldn’t want to destroy that lovely sociopath image you’ve constructed, but in case you didn’t notice, we’ve pretty much been in a relationship from the day we met. It might not have been the kind with sex, but there’s been a whole lot of near death and nearer misses, and things that most people would never make it through together. You’re doing fine. We’re doing fine. Bit of a hiccup with that whole “fake death” thing, which I’d rather wasn’t repeated, for both of our sanity, but I’ve seen all sorts with you, and I’m not running for the hills. I’m not worried about us. Alright?’

She nodded.

‘But no fingers in the crisper.’

She nodded again.

‘Or eyeballs in my mug, in an ideal world.’

This was met by more nodding.

‘I adore you, you bloody maniac.’

She managed to break the nodding cycle to burrow in my neck. ‘You are everything, Joan,’ she whispered against my jugular, and I knew what she meant.

‘Do you want to sleep?’

‘I’ll… find out. You can.’

‘Ok, I’ll just go clean my teeth, I’m knackered.’

‘You can take my dressing gown, if you like.’

‘I’m touched.’

‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’

When I came back she had rearranged the pillows into something vaguely orderly.

‘I may not stay here all night, I don’t always sleep.’

‘Oho, I am well aware of that love, don’t let me hold you back. All I ask is that you keep the bedside violin playing to a minimum.’

‘You won’t be offended?’

‘Pretty sure I won’t.’

‘Good, because we’re already behind schedule, and I’d rather not be further delayed by preventable set-backs.’

‘Schedule for what? Is there some case I’m not aware of?’

‘No, of course not, I’ve made a spread-sheet for us of activities and combinations that I think we would find mutually enjoyable.’

I laughed outright, ‘of course you have.’

‘Yes. And based on your responses this evening, I would be particularly keen to explore your capabilities for multiple orgasm. Not only would this help demonstrate the point I was making earlier about same-sex relationships, but I’ve been reading up on it, and I believe, Joan, really, will you stop laughing?’

‘Sorry, sorry. Can’t well say no to that, can I? But if that’s what you had in mind, I’m going to need a full eight hours minimum,’ I shuffled down under the duvet, enjoying her look of horror.

‘Eight hours? How you get anything done is beyond me,’ she protested, while, for all intents and purposes, arranging herself around me as though she planned to partake in the very somnolent pursuit she was so horrified by, apparently using my chest as a pillow.

‘You cosy there?’

‘Oh don’t get used to it, your current position just happens to coincide with my preferred resting posture.’

I put my arms around her.

‘You know, human contact is meant to have positive benefits on immune response and brain cell generation,’ she continued muzzily.

‘Good thing you fancy a cuddle, then.’

‘I’m not cuddling, I’m taking advantage of the benefits you offer to my limbic system,’ she would have sounded more scandalised if she hadn’t been contentedly worming her way even closer to me, so our legs were now knotted up as well.

‘Oh, yes, how could I have mistaken that?’

‘I probably won’t even stay here for more than an hour or so.’

‘I said I wouldn’t be offended.’

‘Of course. Goodnight Joan.’

‘Nighty night.’

...

When morning came, I was surprised, but not really, to find the bed still populated by one mad consulting detective currently drooling enthusiastically onto my collarbone.  It was the first of many firsts, thought by no means the end of others. While I often, in future, woke entangled in Sherlock’s limpet-like embrace, our home was never a stranger to 4 am experiments, police summons, or insomnia-induced violin interludes. However, on this day, I woke for the first time, perhaps in my whole conscious life, with the contentment of knowing that all the things I loved best were in one place, and that place was with me, and that place was home. Anyone who reads up on our cases will know we haven’t lacked in excitement or incident, but through it all, I’ve never had to wake up as one divided again, and that is worth everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finis. As they say (or don't say unless "they" are a silent film from the 1920s).  
> Still no beta, so apologies for any hideous grammatical errors, which I shall try to remove in due course. This is my first ever public erotica bit so comments welcome, as ever. Happy festive-seasonmas.


End file.
